Ideum's multi-touch, multi user table prototype

The above picture is from Jim Sapadaccini's post about Ideum's mutli-touch table prototype, using NUI (Natural User Interface) software, "Snowflake". Ideum is working on gesture-recognition software for use in future projects.

Ideum will be designing for museum installations, and will include user-testing as they work towards applications that will support collaboration among museum visitors as they interact around the exhibits.

For more information see the Ideum blog, and also Ideum's portfolio page.

Microsoft Surface and the Nintendo Wii?! Interesting mashup from Stimulant

Stimulant: Microsoft Surface + Nintendo Wii Mashup from Stimulant on Vimeo.


Stimulant, a company that has partnered with Microsoft to develop applications for the Surface multi-touch table:

"What do you get when you mash-up Microsoft Surface with a Wii Balance Board? Pressure-sensitive surface computing! Yes, the Surface is sitting directly on the Balance Board (it supports 600 pounds, we checked). Here, Josh demonstrates a simple application that lets users create bubbles of various sizes and roll them around the table using pressure on the edges of the Surface. You also get a sneak peek at the WPF/Silverlight physics engine we've been working on as well. Pressure sensitivity adds an extra dimension to the Surface experience and opens new doors on an already highly advanced platform."

I'd like to learn more about Stimulant's other Surface experiments!

Nintendo Wii

Cute Little Interactive YouTube + Click Car Game: Click on the disappearing "click" button on the screen to save the car from crashing!

Raja Manohar, from Hexolabs sent me a link to his interactive YouTube + click games, and I thought I'd share it with my readers. Enjoy saving the car from a disastrous crash!




Hexolabs, located in India, is involved in a variety of projects, including mobile games for health.

Economic Sounds and Sights: Interactive Economic Timeline

As the economy spun out of control, I decided to gather information from a range of sources and disciplines, to help me understand the complexity of the events leading to the crisis.

The following post is a repository of some of I've collected so far:

The Celestial Economic Sphere, Dataviz for the Finance Biz, Truthiness, and Behavioral Finance, Gordon Gekko...

I'd like to create a collaborative interactive economic time-line someday. For more information, see the following post:

Collaborative Interactive Multimedia Timeline

Ignite08: A festival of interaction, technology, dance, the arts, and science...

I came across this interesting video clip of Audience, a "performance" of 64 mirrors programmed to move together when someone walks by, in attention. The installation was created by Chris O'Shea, author of the Pixelsumo blog, and rAndom international as part of an exhibit at Deloitte Ignite08, a three-day festival of performances and experiences created by artists and scientists at the Royal Opera in London.


Audience from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

Wayne McGregor, the choreographer for the Royal Ballet, was the director of Ignite08. The following is McGregor's vision behind the festival.

"Explaining the ethos behind such a diverse festival programme, McGregor reveals he was influenced by Greek philosopher Aristotle’s definition of the five senses. ‘We experience everything through our senses and, although we are by nature sight-dominated, it is through a complex network and inter-relatedness of these multiple senses that we can perceive events, artistic endeavour included,’ he says."

The "What's On" section of the Ignite08 website includes links short interviews and written profiles of the various Ignite08 participants.

For more information about Wayne McGregor, see Mind in Motion. (Times)

Related

I found the video clip on the Create Digital Motion blog, posted by Peter Kirn:
An Attentive Flock of Mirrors, Built in OpenFrameworks If you like visualization, you'll also like Kirn's post: Code as Art: Generative Visual Inspiration and Sharing.

OpenFrameworks

If you like Spore, you'll appreciate the Genetic Algorithm website!

Since I've been playing Spore and thinking about the the artificial life/genetic algorithm used to create the Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium (see my previous post), I thought I'd visit the
Philippe Rennard's interactive genetic algorithms website I first visited his site when I was taking a course in artificial intelligence for game design.



The first time I visited the site, I viewed it from a small laptop screen. This time, I expored the site on my 22-inch HP Touchsmart. What a difference! I can't wait until the school week to see how this looks on an interactive whiteboard.

Although the website was created several years ago, it still is fun site to visit, especially when you watch all of your little things morph according to the variables you choose.

Another website I recently revisited was the NERO website. NERO stands for Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives. The original NERO project was developed at the University of Austin a few years ago. The latest version can be found on the NERO 2.0 website.

If you have some time on your hands, visit the site and download the program. You use genetic algorithms to train up soldiers in using real-time neuro evolution. See what happens if you let them evolve overnight on your computer!


"Evolve your own robot army by tuning their artificial brains for challenging tasks, then pit them against your friends' teams in online competitions"

Somewhat Related

While I was at Rennard's website, I linked to his page about a book he edited in 2006 that I want to run out and read ASAP. "Handbook of Research on Nature Inspired Computing for Economics and Management". I think this will help book might help me with my quest to better inform myself about the events surrounding the economic situation.

I'm sharing what I find on my Technology Supported Human-World Interaction blog using one of my recent posts to store my collection of pictures, media, quotes, articles, references, and links related to the quest. I hope to incorporate this, hopefully with the help of others, into a dynamic, interactive web-based time-line of the history we are living through right now. For now, here is the link to the "repository":

The Celestial Economic Sphere, DataViz for the Finance Biz, Truthiness, Behavioral Finance, and Greed